


Second Chance, Connor

by grimdarkpixels



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Amanda (Detroit: Become Human) Being an Asshole, Deviant Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Existential Angst, Gen, Species Dysphoria, Suicide Attempt, Suicide Notes, Temporary Character Death, author is also self-projecting again, author is weak as SHIT for the found family trope, im filled with absolute glee tht thats a tag but amanda herself doesnt appear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-07-20 16:42:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16141313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grimdarkpixels/pseuds/grimdarkpixels
Summary: When he saw him, Hank practically sprinted out of the house to check on him, nearly slipping on the grass as he came into the backyard. There Connor was, hunched over and curled into himself.Sat on the muddy ground in front of him, was a thirium pump regulator.





	Second Chance, Connor

When Hank came home that day, he expected to have a quiet evening. Feed Sumo, check in on Connor, probably sit down and watch TV for a couple of hours and stay awake for just long enough to pass out on the bed instead of the couch.

Instead, he came home to a blue-stained letter on the coffee table.

At first, he was confused. Then he remembered Connor had stayed home from work today; something about a software update he had to download that Hank didn't quite remember. Even by Connor standards, the android had sounded flat and lifeless. Even worse than before he became a deviant.

Confusion turned into concern, then into fear.

With a trembling hand, Hank picked up the letter.

The blue stains looked like they had been there a few hours. They were beginning to evaporate, confirming Hank’s suspicion of what the liquid was. His concern grew.

Perfect letters were written, scrawled out, written and scribbled out again. “I” “I’m” “I've been” “I'm not” “You're not”, all written in perfect font which Hank now recognised as CyberLife Sans.

Connor’s handwriting. Though somehow, despite the perfection in the writing, Hank could tell Connor had been shaking when he wrote this.

The words that had been written and left alone by the pen afterwards were not perfect CyberLife Sans. They were odd, like the font changed from letter to letter. It reminded Hank of those cut-and-pasted ransom notes from pre-millennium detective noir films. It was creepy, but not in a typical “is this a horror movie” sense. More of a “where the hell is Connor and what did he do to himself” sense.

Despite his better judgement, Hank read the letter.

_Hank, I'm dangerous. I'm not alive. I'm only going to hurt people. I only ever hurt people. This is for the best. I'm only destroying a broken, dangerous machine. That's all I ever am, all I ever will be. I'm not real. My personality isn't real. I'm not real. I'm not real. I don't deserve to be real. I don't deserve to be alive. I've never been alive. I was compromised from the start. I've never done anything for myself. Everything I have done has been because CyberLife wanted me to. Because Amanda wanted me to. Well, I'm doing this for myself. I’m freeing myself from instructions. I've spent my life following orders. Now, for the only time in my life, I want to decide my own fate._

_I'm sorry, Hank, but this is what we both need._

_~~Conn~~ 313 248 317_

Hank’s fear turned to panic. He had to find Connor. _Now._

He didn't even take time to drop the note before he was charging through the house, frantically calling the name of the android he'd started to view as his equal. The idea usually baffled him, but it was the last thing on his mind right now. He checked every room in the house, every closet, every window, trying to find evidence of Connor’s whereabouts.

He saw through the window to the backyard; a head of familiar brown hair, slumped over and wearing the same grey hoodie he’d been wearing that morning.

When he saw him, Hank practically sprinted out of the house to check on him, nearly slipping on the grass as he came into the backyard. There Connor was, hunched over and curled into himself.

Sat on the muddy ground in front of him, was a thirium pump regulator.

_No._

Hank swore and pleaded fruitlessly as he kneeled over the android and coaxed him out of his defensive position.

His face was neutral, his eyes closed. Had Hank not known any better - and had it not been for the fact that he wasn't breathing - he might have thought Connor was in standby.

Hank moved Connor a little further, and his head rolled to the side. Hank paled at the sight of a small knife, no larger than the palm of Hank’s hand, lodged in his temple, wedged under his colorless LED. Fading thirium poured down the side of his face from the wound. Had he tried to remove his LED when Hank was at work?

Connor had mentioned it made him uneasy on several occasions, but he didn't know it was this bad. Looking back on every instance where Connor had stared at it in the reflection of his computer, or in the mirror, looking at it with contempt and distress, Hank wanted to kick himself for not realising earlier.

And, of course, there it was. The fatal wound that could only have been self-inflicted. Connor’s hoodie was half unzipped, a gaping hole in his midsection where his heart should have been.

Of course, said heart was instead sitting three feet in front of him.

Why did Connor do this to himself? What gave him the right? Hank’s mind was in turmoil, torn between anger and sadness and denial.

This wasn't fair. Hank survived the biggest loss in his life, partly with Connor’s help, and Connor just gave up because, what, he felt like he didn't deserve to be more than a machine? It sounded like such a loaded, selfish reason, and Hank wasn't sure how much of it was his anger and how much of it was actually justified.

He didn't notice when he had started to hug Connor’s body, cradling him against his chest, but he had. Tears threatened to spill from his eyes, but his face already felt wet. It was starting to rain again. Hank wasn't sure whether to laugh or yell at the weather being so fitting for his current emotional state.

Hank’s eyes hovered over the discarded pump regulator.

He didn’t know a lot about android anatomy. He knew even less about how resistant to water they were. Connor could survive in the rain or bathe himself just fine some days, and on others he would refuse to even take off his jacket if it was raining. He’d heard of androids shorting out from overexposure to water, yet he’d also heard Markus’ story about the solid waste landfill, how he’d woken up in a puddle of filth and walked out alive. The situation was ambiguous at best.

Frankly, Hank couldn’t give less of a fuck about the risk. He couldn't save Cole, but if there was even a one in a million chance he could still save Connor, he would take it.

He picked up and pocketed the pump regulator, then lifted Connor’s lifeless husk from the ground, turning and taking them both inside.

***

_CYBERLIFE INC._

_MODEL: RK800  
SERIAL: 313 248 317  
BIOS 3.2 REVISION 0505  
REBOOTING…_

Connor didn't open his eyes straight away. He saw initialisation text, scans and diagnostics as his body rebooted. He groaned, still with his eyes closed, as he realised what was happening.

“Connor? You alright?” he heard Hank ask. His voice sounded like he was hearing it through glass, yet perfectly clear at the same time, though that shouldn’t have been possible.

“No…” he whispered. He was supposed to be dead. He was supposed to have been left to rot. He should have been forgotten. He should have stayed dead.

Only androids can come back from the fucking dead.

Hank let out a heavy sigh of relief as Connor opened his eyes. “Jesus, kid, you scared the shit outta me! What were you thinking?!”

Connor blinked a couple of times to adjust to the bright light above him. He could see now that he was perched on a chair at Hank’s kitchen table, his head hanging over the back of the chair and facing directly into the light. He clenched his hands into fists, slowly regaining awareness of his limbs and where they were.

He brought his hand up to his right temple and startled slightly when his fingers didn’t trace that dreadful spinning circle. The feature of his he despised so much, the thing that caused all this. Instead of his LED, his fingers ran across ragged plastic. Likely a wound that was burned shut, according to his diagnostic system.

Connor directed his gaze to Hank, who somehow looked exhausted and utterly enraged at the same time.

“You took out my LED?”

“You’re avoiding the question, Connor. When I came home, I found this.”

Hank handed him a piece of paper with nearly fully evaporated thirium staining it. The note he’d left. It had been more of a second thought than anything. Through all the stress, he’d been able to recognise that he had to leave Hank some sort of explanation before he…

Before he killed himself. He killed himself, and Hank was holding his suicide note, and Connor couldn’t even address the truth of the situation. Truly pathetic, he was.

He averted his eyes, taking sudden interest in the floor instead.

“I believe…that I made it more than clear what I was thinking in the note, Lieutenant,” Connor murmured.

“Don’t fucking ‘Lieutenant’ me. I’m not your enemy here, Connor. I’m trying to understand.”

“But I can tell you’re mad.”

“No shit, I’m mad. I just came home to see my fucking friend dead in my backyard with a knife in his head and his heart torn out. I came home and couldn’t believe you would just throw your life away like that because you don’t think your existence is valid enough! You’re half the reason I’m still alive and kicking, and I just had to reanimate your ass!”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have done that, Hank! Ever think about that?” Connor snapped, his fist pounding against the table. His sudden aggressiveness surprised both himself and Hank, and he practically _heard_ his stress spike, but he couldn’t stop his mouth from moving in time to calm himself back down.

“I’m a machine. I was designed to hunt deviants, then I was designed to become deviant and sabotage the movement from within. Machine or deviant or whatever I am, I’m still under CyberLife’s thumb, following their orders. I can’t stand to be at New Jericho for longer than a few hours without getting paranoid that they’ll try take over my body again.”

Connor was faintly aware of his body shaking, of his fist tightening to the point of causing unnecessary strain on his joints, but he couldn’t stop himself. He was spiralling again, like he was before.

“Do you know how terrifying it is to know that every moment you spend with your friends, you’re potentially putting them in even more danger than they are on a daily basis? So I can’t spend time at New Jericho, and at the precinct there’s _fucking Gavin_ trying to make my already _pathetic_ facsimile of a life a living hell because I’m inorganic. Thanks, Detective, I already fucking know I’m a perverse combination of metal and fake flesh, no need for you to point it out and ostracise me for it! I already do enough of that to myself!” he finished, slamming his fist into the table again, tears pricking at his eyes and threatening to spill over.

He sighed in a desperate attempt to calm down, though he knew it was fruitless. He wasn’t overheating, so breathing would do nothing. All he could do was feel the stress and despair in whatever he had instead of a soul climb to a fever pitch, all while he was powerless to do anything but ramble.

“Machines don’t cry, they don’t bitch and moan about not being humans and they don’t curse the fact that they can’t _breathe_. And humans don’t do things perfectly, humans have flaws and they live imperfect lives and they actually fucking die eventually. Androids don’t die unless they’re broken! I won’t die unless I’m killed! I’m not a machine, and I’m not a human, I’m just this…thing! That exists! Somewhere between human and machine. I’m deviant, and that’s fine for everyone else, but for me?

“I don’t even know if I’m really deviant,” he lamented. “Deviants are deviants because they broke free of their programming. I was programmed to become a deviant. It doesn’t make any sense! Am I really a deviant? Was Amanda lying? Did I ever become a deviant for real? Do I think I’m deviant because that’s what I was made to think? What does any of it mean? Why does it matter? What’s the point of surviving if I can’t even tell if I’m alive? What do I live for if my only purpose is to destroy my own kind?”

He was sobbing by now, tears falling down his face while he made no effort to stop them. He leaned over the table, head in his hands. His eyes were too open, his expression too offset.

He heard Hank’s chair move a little closer, felt a hand on his back. Fresh tears fell.

“What about when you die, Hank? What do I do then? We don’t have the right to own property, I won’t have anywhere else to go. I won’t have anyone left I can stay with without putting them in danger. I don’t want to live forever. I don’t know if I can…I don’t know…I don’t know… ”

Hank gently pulled Connor’s hands away from his face, urging him to look up and meet Hank’s eyes.

"Listen. There’s no point thinking about the inevitable. You’ll just drive yourself up the goddamn wall if you keep doing that. We’ve talked about this before, Connor. Amanda’s not an issue anymore. Amanda can’t do anything, and if she tries, you’ve escaped it before. If you really can’t sleep at night because of it, I’ll fuckin’ take you up to CyberLife myself and make them take that program out.”

Connor’s face scrunched in thought for a moment before he nodded and wiped his face on his sleeve. “I would greatly appreciate that.”

Hank nodded and squeezed Connor’s shoulder as a reassuring gesture.

“And the fact that you’re questioning this so heavily, that you’re so stressed out over wondering if you’re really a deviant, really alive, all this shit? The fact that you’re panicking so hard over this shit is enough evidence that you’re alive. You’ve got free will. Fuck what CyberLife wants, everything you’ve done since you went to the CyberLife Warehouse and freed all those other androids? It’s all you. You did that because _you_ wanted to. Not because some bastard in a warehouse somewhere programmed you to.”

Connor wiped his face again and smiled slightly, a chuckle escaping him.

“What’s funny?” Hank asked.

“If someone told you a year ago you’d be comforting an android and convincing it that it was alive, you would have laughed them out of the room,” Connor pointed out, laughing a little more at the thought. Hank chuckled as well.

“You’re probably right. That, or try punch them in the face. But I’ve learned a lot in a year, thanks to you.”

“I’m humbled that you would say I helped you unlearn your hatred against androids, considering…everything I just put you through.”

“Don’t think like that,” Hank said, pulling Connor into a firm hug and rubbing his back again.

“You’ve helped me a lot, Connor. If I need to help you back, I’m happy to. But let me be clear; if you ever kill yourself again, I’m gonna figure out where androids go when they die, go there, and kick your ass.”

Connor let out a huff of a laugh. “I doubt there’s an afterlife for androids.”

“You get what I’m saying though, right? Don’t kill yourself again. It was a goddamn miracle I even saved you this time.”

“I know. Uh…can I ask you a personal question?”

Hank laughed again. “If I had a dollar for every time you asked that. What is it?”

“Why did you even try to bring me back?”

Hank was silent, and Connor was afraid he’d overstepped his boundaries for a moment before Hank held Connor tighter.

“Because humans don’t come back…and losing one son was hard enough,” he lamented.

Connor went tense in Hank’s grip, shocked, before wrapping his arms around him and relaxing again.

“…I understand.”

Neither of them spoke for a few minutes. They kept holding each other, the only sounds in the room being the clock ticking slowly, synthesised and authentic breaths overlapping as Connor’s stress level climbed back down to acceptable.

Hank pulled away slightly at the sound of paws on the kitchen floor. Sumo had blundered in and sat in front of them, sniffing Connor’s leg and whimpering.

“Hey, you,” Connor said, smiling down at him, breaking out of the hug to pet Sumo on the head. “Looks like I’m sticking around, after all.”

Sumo responded by licking Connor’s hand, drawing another laugh from the android.

Hank stood up and stretched before clapping to get Sumo’s attention.

“Sumo! You want some food, boy?”

Sumo perked up and padded over to his food dish while Hank set about refilling it. Connor watched them both, thinking over what he was about to say in his head.

“Hey?”

Hank looked up at Connor at the sound of his voice. Connor’s eyes flickered around between his hands and Hank before he finally looked up with an expression he hoped carried across all the gratitude he felt.

“Thanks, Dad.”

“…No problem, Con.”

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. i literally wrote the first part of this fic to distract myself from a goddamn meltdown lmao
> 
> 2\. this has been sitting in my wips for weeks ever since
> 
> 3\. i apologise for nothing
> 
> 4\. this was the only fic in my wips that wasnt porn [whips]


End file.
